Good evening. I don't know all this talk about an accent. I know I don't have one. I'm quite convinced of it. I wanted to take your Bible and open to the book of First Thessalonians like to begin there this evening. First Thessalonians chapter four. As James said, I minister in Toronto and we found in Toronto recently knowledge of scripture is so low that we usually tell people what page number to turn to and then explain what the big numbers and the little numbers mean because honestly people just don't know that you've got to look for the page 987 and then the big number 4 and the small number 1. And we're dealing with people there who, 51% of the people who live in Toronto were born in a different country. And so we've had this massive wave of immigration, and it's a joy to be part of a church that looks like that. And the Lord is at work in Toronto, so. Begin in 1 Thessalonians chapter four and verse one. Let me read God's word. Finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification. That you abstain from sexual immorality. That each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor. not on the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. That no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this disregards not man, but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. For that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands as we instructed you, so that you may live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. For quite some time now, I've had a bit of a fascination with the parts of the Bible that command us how we're to live our day-to-day lives. In the Bible, we have those big picture commands like the Great Commission. Go and make disciples of all nations. There's our mission in this world. It tells us the what, what we're to do. Go, make disciples. It doesn't tell us a whole lot about the how. It doesn't tell us how do we actually live that out in real life. You might think of a favorite catechism question, what is the chief end of man? What is man's great purpose in life? You know the answer, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. But what does that look like on a Monday afternoon? What does that look like at home, in church, in the office? And the answers come all throughout the New Testament. And you know what's interesting to me, and especially in the face of many of the books and much of the speaking, many of the sermons in the Christian world today, the writers of the New Testament, God through the writers of the New Testament, they don't seem that interested in telling us how to live an extraordinary life, how to live a radical life, a crazy kind of life, an above and beyond kind of life. They just tell us how to be ordinary, how to be very normal people. And it seems like, as you read the New Testament, that as far as the Bible is concerned, being ordinary is plenty good enough. That's what we're called to, to live ordinary lives. There's this lifetime of challenge in being very ordinary people. And so I've been asking myself lately, what does that look like? Just what is the ordinary Christian life? What is it that God calls us to? And the clearest, the most concise answer I've found is right here in 1 Thessalonians. Answers come throughout the New Testament, but this answer is an awfully good one. I'll give you a little background to the book here. Apparently Paul's answering a letter that these Christians, this church, had sent to him. They had sent him a letter and now he's writing back and he's answering some of the questions they had asked him. And those answers are very, very helpful for us. Thessalonica was a big, it was a busy city, not unlike a city like this. It was a very immoral city. I'm sure this is a very immoral city as well. There was sin, there was lots of opportunities to witness sin in that city. Lots of opportunities to witness the effects of sin right there in that city. These people, they lived 2,000 years ago, very different time, very different place, very different setting, but really we're not that much different from them, are we? They aren't too different from us. So this church, they wrote to Paul and they asked him, how do we live lives that are pleasing to God? How can we live in a way that honors and glorifies God? Now, we might think you've been reading a lot in the Christian world. You might think that God would say, OK, in order to carry out the Great Commission, here's what you need to do. You need to sell everything you own. You need to move way across the world. You need to go as a missionary to the far corners of the earth. That's the kind of life that pleases God. And especially he's writing to a mature church here. He's writing to people who understand the gospel, people who love the Lord, who have been Christians for some time. You might think that would be his command. Or maybe he would say, you need to sell everything and be monks. You need to cloister yourself away and just study God's word. You need to live in solitude and just spend your whole life alone with the Lord. I think today we read books that make us feel like these are the sorts of things we need to do. We love to read books like this. They get us all pumped up, but then six months or a year goes by and we realize, I'm still working the same job. I'm still working nine to five. I feel a bit of guilt. I feel a little weight from all of this. I kind of feel like I'm God's B squad, right? There's the A-listers who are out there doing the hard work, Imagine there's the people like me who are just doing that mundane stuff. That's not what Paul says at all here. He doesn't tell them anything like this. He says, do you want to live a life that's pleasing to God? Do you want to live in such a way that God is fully pleased with you, that He's thrilled with you? Here's what you need to do. Here's the Christian life. Here's what Paul says. He says, first thing, be sexually pure. Second thing, love one another. Third thing, Live a quiet life. We might say, be decent, be devoted to one another, and be diligent. We'll follow that as an outline. Just as we look at that text, let's draw each of these out of that text and see this life, this life that's pleasing to God, the sanctified, the Christian life. It's a life of decency, a life of devotion, and it's a life of diligence. First thing he tells them, be decent. I don't mean decent as in good enough, you know, ah, decent meal, not that kind of thing. Decent as in proper, decent as in sexually pure, to behave in a decent, to behave in an appropriate manner. Do you want to live a life that's pleasing to God? Do you want to know how can I live out that great commission? How can I live as a Christian in this world Be sexually pure is Paul's first response to the question. That seems out of place, doesn't it? But why is that here? Why is that so important? Well, because the way we understand this gift God has given us, this gift of sexuality, that tells us an awful lot about whether we're obeying God or whether we're just following the world. That's true today, that was just as true in Paul's day. Now, I think we need to correct something here. We tend to think that things are getting worse and worse, that we're dealing with problems today that nobody has ever had to deal with before. That's just not it. The French have this great little skeptical saying, they say, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Isn't that true? The more things change, the more they really just stay the same. Back then, in that city, in that day, there was widespread sexual immorality. In that day, a man who was well-off, a man who was well-to-do and respected in society, he would have a wife, and the wife's job was to provide him with a legitimate heir. And then he would also have this series of concubines and mistresses who would have another function in his life, and that was respected. That was respectable. So think about this. Paul is going there, and other people are going there, and they're preaching the gospel. People are believing, obeying God, and they're coming into the church now, and maybe a man is coming in, he's been saved, but he's got a wife, and a concubine, and a mistress, and they're saying, what do we do about this? Or maybe one of those concubines has gotten saved, she's become a believer, and now she's coming to church, and she's saying, well, I'm living this immoral life. That was the context Paul was writing to here. People were being baptized, coming into church membership, but coming out of that kind of immorality. So Paul has to address this. He needs to address this as an important part of Christian living. He can't assume this. He can't ignore it. He has to speak to it. Look at verse three for me. He says, this is the will of God, your sanctification. What is it? That you abstain from sexual immorality. That each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. So he has two commands for them here. One negative command and one positive command. One thing they must not do and one thing they must do. First, he gives this negative command. They must abstain from sexual immorality. They must avoid it. They must run away from it. They cannot give into it. And he ties this directly, directly with their sanctification. Do you want to be holy? Then avoid sexual immorality. Do you want to be holy? Then a great question to ask, are you abstaining from sexual immorality? Are you abstaining from what is evil? Giving in to sexual immorality, living in sexual immorality, it will stunt your spiritual growth. It will necessarily inhibit your spiritual growth. If you ever find you're not growing as a Christian, you feel like it's been so long since you've seen evidence of God's grace and growing in grace, Well, there's a good thing to ask yourself. Are you giving in to sexual immorality? He gives that negative command, and then he gives a positive command. He says, control your own body in holiness and honor. Let me pause just to show you something that he does here. I love how Paul models right here how to put sin to death. Not sinning is not enough. Right? In Paul's writing, not sinning is not enough. He doesn't just say abstain from sexual immorality. You need to do what is right. You need to take that sin out of your life and you need to replace it with holiness. You need to actually delight to do what is right here. So the way to put sin to death is not only to stop sinning, but to replace that sin with something better, something that's holy. Paul says, put away immorality, and in its place now, delight to control yourself in holiness and in honor. It's like when that sin is taken away, there's this void in your life now. If you don't fill it with something good and something pure, then just another sin can rush into that void. So you take away the sin, you put the sin to death, and you now pursue what is right and what is holiness. As you run from sin, you run to holiness. Now sexual purity is expressed positively in self-control. Self-control, that fruit of the Spirit that I don't know that we talk about enough today. Self-control. Christians learn to control their desires. They learn to control even those desires that seem so, so natural. What could be more counter-cultural today than to say, there are some natural things, some things that seem so very natural, that you need to learn to control. Not everything that is natural or that appears natural is good. The Christian life is this life of mastery over evil desires, evil thoughts, even those ones that seem natural, those ones that seem like this is who I really am. And it's replacing those with better thoughts and with pure desires. So he gives two commands. He says, abstain from sin and control your own body in holiness and honor. And then he follows with two warnings, two very serious warnings, warnings for our good, warnings given out of love. They tell us, those warnings tell us why sexual purity is such an important part of Christian living, why it's so closely tied to our sanctification, to our growth and holiness. Look at verse six. that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this, disregards not man, but God, who gives His Holy Spirit to you. The first warning he gives here, if you commit that kind of sexual sin he's warning you about, you're actually calling down God's discipline upon yourself, God's chastisement upon yourself. When you sin sexually, you are defrauding another person of something that is his, of something that is hers. It is not yours to take. And God is an avenger. God will bring justice. God will bring his chastisement upon you. You can hide your sexual sin from your husband, or from your wife, or from your mom or your dad, from anyone else. But God sees. God knows. And God will protect that person from you. He will discipline you if He has to, that good work, because He is a loving Father. Second warning, if you ignore these commands, you are ignoring God Himself. God gives you the Holy Spirit and when you have the Holy Spirit, you have the ability not to sin. You've got the ability to not sin. And so if you commit sexual sin, you are sinning against the active presence of the Holy Spirit who is there within you telling you not to sin. That is a serious thing. Christian, when you commit sin, it's only, only because you choose not to take hold of what the Holy Spirit offers you. And that is to ask God to discipline you, to ask God to chastise you. Before we move on, what does he not say here? He doesn't say to be a good Christian, you need to be a monk, you need to take a vow of celibacy, you need to cloister yourself away. He doesn't say that. Be married. Enjoy life, enjoy children, enjoy the sexual relationship. That's all good, but be pure in it. And I love, again, in the face of what we hear, so many messages outside the church and even within the church, I love how he addresses sexuality, how God addresses sexuality in the Bible. Frankly, but never graphically. Honestly, but always purely. There's a call here for us to model this in our interactions with one another, I think. We can speak about these things. We have to speak about these things. We can do it with dignity. We just follow the model given for us here in scripture. So there's the first command. Do you want to know how to live a life that honors God? Do you want to live that life that's pleasing to God? Be decent. Be sexually pure. That's a command they needed. That's a command we need today so very badly. Paul tells them to be decent, to refuse to be sexually immoral, and now he's going to contrast lust with love. Don't be controlled by lust. Instead, be driven by love. So you can't just stop at being decent. You need to be devoted. Second thing we want to draw out of this text, you need to be devoted to one another. Let me read again verses 9 and 10. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. For that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more." Now, you know, there's some places in the New Testament where somebody writes to a church and he brings warnings to that church. Maybe those churches are warned about their lack of love. It's helpful for us to read those, to read those warnings and to consider them in the context of our own churches. You read Revelation chapter two, there's that warning to the church in Ephesus where Jesus himself is saying, I have this against you. You have abandoned the love you had at first. Every local church has this choice. You can love or you can die. This church in Ephesus, at one time it had been marked by love Now Jesus himself is warning this church, you need to recover that love, or he would have to withdraw his presence from that church. That church would die out. Well this church in Thessalonica, it wasn't like that at all. Here's a church that was just excelling in love. So Paul was able to write them and say, I don't even actually have to teach you about love. I'm going to anyways, but I don't have to. You understand this, you're living this out. And so think about your church, your local assembly of believers. Do you think your church would hear, I have this against you? You've lost the love you had at first. Or do you think you would hear, I have no need to even write to you about love? I wonder. It's not only loving doctrine, right? In the reformed world, we're really good at loving doctrine. It's not only loving preaching, we're good at that too, but it's loving people. It's loving one another, and that's far, far more difficult. Let's draw four observations about Christian love out of this little text. The first thing he teaches about love is that God is our teacher. He says, you yourselves have been taught by God to love. Love is taught by God. How? How is it that God teaches us to love one another? Well, more than anything else, it's by the cross, by the gospel of Jesus Christ, by the example. By the example right there, the cross is the best, the highest possible example of love. That's why Paul could tell them, you love one another, but you need to love one another all the more. He wasn't a nag, right? He wasn't just nagging at them here. He's just saying, when Jesus Christ is your model, when we're looking at the cross, you've got a long, long way to go. There's always room to learn to love one another more when you're holding up the cross as the example of love. Is your church centered upon that message? Is your church just obsessed with the cross of Jesus Christ? Within a local church, the love of one Christian to another, one person to another, it has to depend on our understanding of what it is that happened there at the cross. We've got all the knowledge these people have. In some ways, we've got more, right? We've got the whole Bible. They only had a partial Bible available to them. There's nothing they had that we don't, so we've got no excuse not to love so much that Paul would be able to say to each one of us, I don't even need to write to you about this. Second observation about love. Christians love one another. The primary object of Christian love is other Christians. He says, you have been taught by God to love one another. In our family devotions, we've been reading through the book of Acts. It's one of the ones we come back to again and again. And it's just so clear and so obvious in the church. The early church was just marked by love. Love was this defining characteristic of someone who had been transformed by God. It doesn't mean that Christians don't love people outside the church. Of course we do. However, it does mean the primary reach of love from one Christian is other Christians. So then people would look at these people who loved one another so much, and that love would be attractive. People would be able to say, look how those people love one another. So in your church, how are you loving other people? There's a major challenge I see in my church, and it may be one in your church as well, Expressing love when it's inconvenient in your life. I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more tomorrow. You know, until your love inconveniences you, you probably haven't really loved at all, right? If you're only loving at the times when it fits your calendar, when it fits your schedule. Another challenge, expressing love to people who are very, very different from you. It's pretty easy to love people who are the same age as you, the same race as you, the same gender as you, the same kind of family situation, whatever it is. It's one thing to love in those easy ways. It's so much harder to love in the difficult ways, to love people who are so unlike you. Until your love makes you uncomfortable, again, maybe you just haven't really loved at all. I've been to churches and I've stood at the front of churches where there was a rift in the church over education. You could literally just see it. The people had divided over that. So the people whose kids were homeschooled are here. The people whose kids were in Christian schools were over here. That says something. That says the gospel is good. The gospel is great, but it's not great enough to overcome that kind of thing, right? The gospel is good, but it can't do that. I've been to churches that were racially divided, and that says something, too. When you have an all-white church in a very racially diverse neighborhood, it says something. It says, you know, this gospel is amazing, but there's a limit on the gospel. It can't heal that. It can't draw together people from all nations, tribes, and tongues. The gospel compels us to love people who are so, so different from ourselves. compels us to love at the expense of our schedules as well. The third thing, third observation about love, love extends outward. It begins close and it radiates out. He says, you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. This city was in a region, a region called Macedonia. There were other churches there, ones you've heard of, Ephesus, Berea, other churches. Paul's saying here, I can gauge the way you love one another by the expressions of love I see in other churches in this region. Think about the sun on a hot day. You feel the heat of the sun, right? You're outside, it's hot, beating down on your face. What is it like 93 million miles away on the surface of the sun if it's this hot here? What's it like there right at the core? And Paul's looking at love like that. He's speaking of their love extended to churches throughout the region. And he's saying, if your love is so hot, there's so much of it that it radiates all the way out there. I can only imagine what it's like right there, right at the center. People in other churches would be saying, if they love us this much, I can only imagine how much they love one another right there in their church. If your love doesn't extend way beyond the bounds of your local church, you may not love as much as you think you do. Fourth, final observation about love here. Love is meant to grow. Love is a lifelong calling. Love is meant to grow all the more. Even though this church was loving so well, Paul still said, do this more and more. Because he knows where love isn't growing, it's declining. It's not a static thing, right? You don't ever reach the end of love. You can't ever coast. Every husband, every wife knows that, right? You don't ever get to the point with love where you can now just go on cruise control and coast, right? It's always requiring effort, always requiring more. Because, of course, it's not just feeling. Feeling love is important, but that's not all there is. It's doing. Love takes form in action. And as love grows, it takes deeper and better and costlier action. Do you love people in your local church more than you did, say, a year ago? Two years ago? How would you know? I don't mean feeling here. That's important. I'm not talking about feelings. Do you pray for them more? Are you there with them more? Are you allowing them to inconvenience you more? How are you doing? How are you really doing when it comes to love? Again, before we move on, what does he not say? It's always an interesting question to ask. What does he not say? He doesn't say start a soup kitchen, or open your home to strangers, or move to the inner city and deny yourself all comforts. Those may be good things. There's nothing wrong with any of those things, but His command is simple. It's love one another. That's Christian living. That's growing. There's a lifetime of challenge right there, just in loving the people the Lord brings into your life. So He's told them, in order to live lives that please God, they need to be decent and they need to be devoted. He has one more thing He's going to tell them, and it's this. Be diligent. Verses 11 and 12, he says, aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands as we instructed you so that you may live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. Here's a Christian life. Aspire to live quietly. Aspire to live quietly. Interesting sentence. It means something like, make it your ambition to have no ambition. Work hard to be still. It's something like that. There's an oxymoron there. He's telling them, be peaceful. Go about your ordinary work. Live your ordinary lives. The honorable way to live, calm down. Be unremarkable, be content to be unremarkable. Live a life that's simple, that's calm, that's tranquil. Kind of hurts a little bit, doesn't it? Don't you want that challenge? Go out and do something crazy. Go out and do something radical. Who wants to be normal? Who wants to be unremarkable? Who wants to be unnoticed? We all want to be special. We all want to stand out, don't we? All want to be known for doing something or being something. Paul says, be normal, be quiet. And there's two ways this kind of quiet life manifests itself. Mind your own business and work hard. Mind your own business. He says, aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs. I guess there must be something of the busy body in each one of us if he felt that he had to say this, right? You're one of those people who has an opinion on everything, especially maybe those things you don't really have any business having an opinion on. You don't know anything about it, but you've got an opinion. That's probably what was going on here, right? People who just kept getting involved in those things. It's not your concern, and yet they're getting involved. Is that you raising your eyebrow? You know, I don't know how we can afford that car. Or man, that guy lives in an awfully big house. Second guessing one of the ministries in the church. You've got nothing to do with that ministry, but you know you could run it better than the person running it. Paul says, don't. You don't have to have an opinion on it. Just leave well enough alone. It's only pride. It's only pride that convinces you should get involved in things that really have, they're not any of your affair. Pride's what tells us that, oh, I've got something to say about this. I could help him out with this. Paul told them, live a quiet life. As part of that quiet life, just mind your own affairs. Mind your own business. You know, you can love people without meddling, right? Really, you love people best when you don't meddle in their lives. Be humble. Mind your own business. Second part to living that quiet life was this. Work with your own hands. Earn a living. Work hard. Take care of yourself. And we're not completely sure why there's this call here to work hard. Where he goes next in the letter, maybe that's a hint. He goes on to talk about the return of Jesus. So maybe people there in that church had just given up. They said, well, if Jesus is coming back, I'm not gonna need money anyway, so I'm just going to wait. He's gonna come anyways. Or maybe it's where he's just been in the letter. People are loving so well. They're loving people in the church so well, people are coming in and saying, I don't even have to work. These people just keep giving me stuff. This is amazing. And so Paul's, what he's not doing, he's not writing to people here who wanted to work and couldn't find work. He's not being harsh to the unemployed people here who are looking for work. He's writing to people who had skill, who had opportunity, who had ability and just had no desire to work. Don't miss who's writing these words, right? Don't miss who's writing Work With Your Own Hands. If anyone in all the world of that day had reason to consider working with his hands beneath them, it was this man Paul, right? This man was a great scholar. He was one of the best trained of all men in the ancient world. He was a great intellectual. I mean, if you've read Romans, you know this man had this giant brain, right? He was a smart guy. He was a pastor. He was a church planter. He was an apostle. He had the right to go to people and say, you ought to support me in this ministry. And yet, what did he do? He was a tent maker. He worked with his own hands, just like he told them. He didn't consider this beneath him. He didn't consider this undignified. He wasn't saying you literally need to work with your hands like being a teacher or something like that is wrong. He's just saying work hard, support yourself, take care of your needs. So do you work? Do you work hard? That's your calling whether you're a landscaper or whether you're a homemaker. It's even your call if you're retired. There's this call not to be idle. Charles Spurgeon said, the most likely man to go to hell is the man who has nothing to do on earth. Idle people tempt the devil to tempt them. Idle people tempt the devil to tempt them. Paul says, do you want to be a Christian who honors God? Be unremarkable. Be content to be unremarkable. What does he not say? He doesn't say sell everything, move to the far side of the world, be a missionary. That's a call for some people, absolutely. Some people need to do that. But that's not a general call to all Christians. The call to all Christians? Live quietly, mind your own business, work hard. Do you feel like that's mundane? Does that just seem so ordinary that if you do that, you'll still be living with guilt, like you're still on the B squad, like there still must be more for you there? Well, hold on, what does this do? What does this life of diligence do? Look at verse 12. so that you may live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. Why would you want more than that? To live this quiet life is to express love. To live this quiet life, that displays the power of God within you. This life benefits Christians, it benefits non-Christians. It benefits Christians because you'll be dependent on no one. You won't have to take advantage of the love and generosity of others. In fact, you'll be able to contribute. You'll be able to give in love and generosity to other people. That's love as an action. It'll benefit unbelievers. You'll live properly before outsiders. You'll live properly before those who do not believe. And you know that nobody in your workplace is impressed if you're the laziest person there, if you're the busybody, if you're the meddler. So work hard, avoid interfering with others, and you will be carrying out the Great Commission. You will be living as a witness to God's grace right there where the Lord has placed you. So be diligent. Diligence is this critical part of living a life that honors God. God expects us to be ordinary, ordinary Christians. And here's that life. It's a life of decency, a life of devotion, and a life of diligence. And you know, we see all of that modeled in the life of Paul. We see all of that modeled in the life of Peter. More than anything, we see all of that modeled in the life of Jesus Christ. There's a man who is decent. There is never a hint of sexual immorality in the life of Jesus Christ. He's a man who could be around women and they felt safe, they felt loved. No one could accuse him of immorality. He was devoted. Has anyone ever loved like Jesus Christ? Of course not. His whole life was love. He loved his friends. He loved his enemies. He loved everyone. He loved strangers. And of course, his death was love. And he was diligent. He was a carpenter. We remember the last few years of his life, but before that he was a carpenter. He was working with his hands. And even when he began his public ministry, he carried out the entire task his father had given him. He carried it out to completion, and he did it all with joy. He, he is our great example of this very life that's commended to us. You know, it's one thing in a church to have evangelism programs, right? And there's a place for that, to bring in some sort of program sharing the gospel, but You can't do programs at the expense of just living this kind of a life. If you live an upright and worthy life right where the Lord has you, you will be living a life of evangelism. You'll have all the opportunities you're willing to take to share the gospel with others. Same thing with mentoring. It's well and good in the life of a church to have a formal mentoring or discipleship program, but even better, battle sin. Live a quiet and godly life. Work hard. Allow others to see you. Allow others to imitate you. This quiet and decent and devoted and diligent life, it makes the gospel look great. This, this is the life that's pleasing to God. Amen. Let me pray for us. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that your word is so very practical. It tells us who you are, and we glory in that. It also tells us how we can live in this world in a way that pleases you. I ask that we would be people who are content to live the life you've given us, not to feel like we're not doing enough, not to slip into that mode of thinking where we need to do so much more for you, but to understand if we live this life, we are honoring and glorying in you. Pray that you would be pleased in us. Pray that we would love you, that we would serve you with all we are and in every opportunity you give us. In Christ's name, amen.